From a Comment on Cafe Hayek: “Marxists must define poverty as a relative phenomenon. Otherwise, they couldn’t in good conscience be marxists.”
Or perhaps, better said, they wouldn’t have a semi-rational reason to justify class envy, and therefore attempt to obtain unearned social status through political power rather than through market service of others.
[callout]Social status is important. It’s a cognitive necessity. It tells us who to imitate.[/callout]
The left’s desire is not to end poverty, it is instead, the desire to alter one’s natural, biologically and environmentally determined social status either by gaining access to unearned income or by gaining status through access to political power.
And social status is not irrelevant. Social status is important. It’s a cognitive necessity. It tells us who to imitate.
An Ideology: Any reasonably coherent set of social, cultural, moral and political ideas that can be used to obtain and hold political power on the behalf of a part of a population that perceives it has similar interests.
THE POLITICAL IDEOLOGIES
There are three basic western philosophical traditions:
1) Aristocratic and Conservative with the longest time preference. 2) Middle Class and Classical Liberal with medium time preference 3) Proletarian and Socialist with short time preference.
These three philosophies loosely correspond to social class sentiments and perceptions of social order. They also loosely correspond to the Monarchy, the Senate, and House of Commons. The insight of the british model was to give each social class it’s house, and to force the houses to collaborate in order to enact laws.
BREAKING THE CLASS BASED MODEL OF GOVERNMENT
This class-based model was successful in adapting to changing currents until the thought leaders of the American and French revolutions attempted to break the class model and transfer full power to either the middle (american) or lower (french) classes. And was further exacerbated by the Russian and Chinese revolutions which (regrettably) succeeded in transferring political power to the proletariat – in the greatest destruction of human life in history after the Black Plague. After the world wars, Europe was broken economically and socially and the citizenry rejected the aristocratic model entirely. (( And did so wrongly. Germany’s intellectuals were right: the anglo social order was socially destructive without the empire to support it – as the experience of both Spain and Portugal had demonstrated. German social order is the most economically productive yet discovered because it mobilizes the working class to produce quality exports. Exactly as it’s 300 princes had done during the medieval era prior to unification. )) Instead of the fraternal aristocratic model, which was the unique feature of western culture, governments sought solace in socialist doctrine and universal enfranchisement. Meanwhile western authoritarian and military leadership was absorbed by the Americans along with the British navy and port system. The parliamentary method of government has been moderately successful given the …….
Americans used this period of postwar economic prosperity to assert their inherited global military power to undermine global communism – successfully. But the cost was high, and the US is now largely bankrupt and unable to fund it’s existing military structure as well as it’s redistributionist benefit system. And the west must now combat the primitivism of Islam, which has taken on the proletarian strategy communists at a time when european postwar economies have recovered, but the developing economies are competing with western lower classes for jobs.
To fund this military empire to protect the west against proletariat primitivism, Americans export debt, and effectively charge the world an indirect tax, instead of taxing other countries directly and creating a political problem for them. Then americans use that debt to finance the cost of running the world trade and monetary system.
Unfortunately, in the process of running the empire, Americans have now become a fractured society, with race, culture and class divisions, as well as somewhere between four and ten different geographic ‘nations’ within the USA, each with different cultures, but operating under the administration of an international imperial government. Many of which, within these sub-countries feel the government is as oppressive to their cultures as do foreign nations. Under this trade empire, the US economy is now so dependent upon the value of the dollar, and the use of military force to determine the means by which trade is administered, that the citizenry will suffer if these obligations are reduced.
This series of events shows the danger of empire building to national cohesion — whether it is done on purpose as in the case of Britain defending herself from Spain and France, or by accident, in the case of the USA, trying to maintain stability, and defense from communism during and after the war period.
GOVERNMENT’S STRUCTURE MUST REFLECT SOCIETY OR SOCIETY WILL FRACTURE BECAUSE IT DOES NOT
The government must reflect the class structure of society in one way or another, so that the classes that do exist can use the government to cooperate rather than regress into class warfare. And if government does not reflect society, then society will either change to reflect the government’s class structure, by the massess aspiring or attempting to become upper middle class, which has some value, or in the opposite case, the aristocracy will abandon the nation as it has in the USA and in Ireland, which is entirely destructive to culture and economy alike. Or the upper and upper middle classes will become a predatory diasporic class like it has with the Jews in the west, and the Chinese in Oceania.
While both the aristocratic (natural law) and proletariat (socialist) political philosophies specifically state that society consists of classes, our classical liberal and democratic socialist philosophies promote the false philosophy of egalitarianism: the factual equality of ability, and the couter factual equality of outcomes – rather than the equality of opportunity despite our differences in ability to produce beneficial outcomes. The socialists, in their effort to undermine the aristocratic political system so that their elites may sieze power, supposedly on behalf of the proletariat classes, have taken control of our educational system to reinforce the justification for their seizure of power in the popular consensus, and created enough of a popular mythos to affect voting patterns, reinforcing their political power, while at the same time, reducing the competitiveness of our lower classes against foreign groups, by a process of intentional “Harrison Bergeron-ing” – dumbing down.
This is not to say that giving people property rights is necessary a bad thing. In fact, it’s an exceptional thing for everyone in the society. THe question is not whether people should have individual property rights. Its whether people need poliitcal rights if they have property rights. And logic would dicate that no. NOt only do they not need political rights, but that by giving people the opportunity for political power, we distract them from developing more useful activities in the market.
We are argue over the absurdity of choosing the best single form of government, when what we mean is ‘which class should rule?’, and “if any class should rule it should be the lower, which is the majority.” When the question itself posits a false dichotomy: the question is, since society consists of different social classes, what institutions should we create to help them cooperate such than none harms the other, and only by mutual benefit can they reach their desired ends. And so we have chosen ‘winner takes all’ government, and because of that choice, we have also, of necessity, chosen perpetual class warfare, and the destruction of the cultural cohesion necessary for the perpetuation of our nations.
So, we should reframe the question, from “which class should rule, using their class’ philosophy”, to “which form of government best facilitates the cooperation of the social classes for achieving shared ends?”
That answer, logically, is that we can, with some effort, accomodate all three class philosophies into one form of government. In fact, we had that form of government. We foolishly have abandoned it, because of the rapid shift in economic power during the industrial revolution.
THE OTHER MISTAKES WE HAVE MADE – AND NEED TO CORRECT
The first mistake we made was the transfer of political power from the landed aristocracy to the middle class, rather than replacing landed and inherited aristocracy with a new layer of aristocracy whose position was earned by merit. This allowed a new aristocracy to form, that is excluded from, and invisible to the politcal economy of society. American upper classes have abandoned participation in politics. The second mistake we made was egalitarianism, and structuring our government for rule by a single class. But we have made a series of other mistakes, partly because we lacked the knowledge of other options, lacked technologies, ideas, philosophical frameworks and processes to provide an alternative to the Hellenic and British models.
-The Errors Of The Political Process:
Scalability of the Debate form of government.
Rational Debate rather than Empirical Pragmatism: The problem of Calculation.
Taxes rather than loans.
Devolution of the defense provided by the senate / House of lords / Upper house
Descent From Utilitarianism Into Moralism
Failure to Keep Pace WIth Technology – debit cards and direct democracy.
-The Errors Of Abstract Ideas:
The Corporeal State, and the Corporeal Business
The Error Of Free Trade
The Error Of Intellectual Property
Probabilism From The Physical Sciences Applied To The Social Sciences
-The Errors Of Human Nature:
The Blank Slate vs Natural Law
The Prohibition of Political Wealth
Ignoring the Status Economy
Devaluing Aristocracy
Devaluing Voluntary Charity
The Universal Utility of Freedom, Democracy and Capitalism
The Impossibility of Agreement upon means, even if possible to agree upon ends.
-The Errors Of Credit and Money
The Relationship Between Time And Money
Breaking The Relationship Between Knowledge And Valuation Among Bankers and Lenders
Erroneous Priorities: The Financialization Of The Economy vs The Productivity Of The Economy
The Creation of Ponzi Benefits Packages Rather Than Saving and Insured Investments.
The Errors Of Incentives
The Transformation of Incentives from Negative Punishments, to Positive Rewards.
The Inability of governments to ostracize individuals and groups.
The Inability of popular government to punish real crime
The criminalization of political speech and action.
GOVERNMENT IS A SET OF INSTITUTIONS
Governments consist of organizations of human beings who follow processes, rituals and rules. These processes and rules may be historical and habitual, or formal and written. The purpose of these rules is to allow people to PLAN: to make plans and to cooperate with one another. So that they may take the risks needed to increase productivity and trade. Even dictators need a bureaucracy: an organization that will execute their will. Democracies more so, because without the hierarchy they must rely upon the established rules to give them authority by which to persuade others to cooperate with them to achieve their goals. And people who wish to cooperate, and combine their capital to produce ends, need some assurance that their risk will allow them to take the profits from that risk.
We call these organizations, rituals, processes and rules ‘institutions’. Institutions are the means by which we cooperate and compete politically.
REPAIRING THE INSTITUTIONSInstitutions:
Managed Corporate Institutions
Managed Private Institutions:
Each institution operates as do the medical, legal and accounting industries, which are largely self regulating, and self-educating. They report to senate committees.
ALSO:THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
THE REGIONAL GOVERNMENTS
Money, Insurance, War are global but all trade and culture is local.
NATIONALISM
Monarchs have been superior to elected leaders because they have a longer time preference. And with a longer time preference they can more wisely veto those fashionable changes which will, in the long term, harm the society, or transfer power between social classes.
CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY IS A CLASS BASED SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT
(undone)
MONARCHY HAS ALWAYS BEEN A CLASS BASED SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT
(undone)
ALL SYSTEMS OF GOVERNMENT NEED IDEOLOGIES
Monarchy needs a sufficient ideological base. The people have abandoned the church. The church has abandoned christendom. Economics has replaced cultural nationalism, and empirical tools have replaced the moral sentiments. For monarchy to prevail in the post-mystical age, we must remake it’s foundations so that they rely upon economic and cultural superiorities, not desire to return to the past.
Monarchs have been superior to elected leaders because they have a longer time preference. And with a longer time preference they can more wisely veto those fashionable changes which will, in the long term, harm the society, or transfer power between social classes.
Monarchy has a high correlation with Nationalism.
Under monarchy multiculturalism is not a problem, because cultures can form communities of interest in as many monarchies as they wish. And there is no threat from them, because they are denied access to political power, and must compete in the market, rather than politics. IN fact, this is the primary virtue of aristocratic society: people compete in the market to serve one another, rather than in politics to enslave one another. And the monarch profits from the fact that this competition, which he or she presides over, serves better to serve the people, than politics ever shall. Politics cannot create wealth. It an only create an an environment where wealth can be created.
So, under monarchies, and nationalism, people form nations, or states, which must compete against other states. These competitions then inform their value judgements – benefitting or punishing them for their decisions.
MONARCHY AND NATIONALISM
Now, why is that circumstance of nationalism a “good”? Because cultures consist of a series of hypothesis and value judgements. Each value judgement in the cultural catalogue asks each member of the community to suffer the cost to himself of forgoing opportunities to fulfill his self interest in order to ‘fund’ the social order. Social orders consist of these rules, and the associated costs in forgone opportunities. In nearly all societies these rules consist of forgoing opportunity to lie, cheat, steal, hurt, and murder. And in most advanced societies, we convert these social words into market language, and call them Fraud, Theft and Violence. But they are effectively synonyms. People can then use this market for behavior to form the society that they wish to. In other words, nationalism, or monarchies, allow people to form and join communities where they have shared values. And to enjoy the benefits of those values, and to bear the costs of those values. People are happiest when they know the rules, when they agree with them, when they can choose which community to belong to, and when it is possible to judge a set of values by their visible outcomes. Furthermore, diversity of communities does not require that we oppress one another. Diversity today is a mask for one group, largely the proletarian, for empowering the state to equally oppress everyone, and to transfer power from the meritocratic-ally endowed classes to those who are not using a false language of morality, that is framed in religious tribal language, but under analytical scrutiny simply is nothing more than exploitation. It is anything other than diversity. It is using the mask of diversity to institute their version of homogeneity.
http://www.navytimes.com/news/2011/03/ap-military-report-too-many-whites-men-leading-military-030711/?sms_ss=facebook&at_xt=4d76711665f3457e%2C0Ah.. Yes. “The Final Solution” for eliminating white male Christendom. The White Males are indeed the worst sort of villans. (Well, except for every other group of elites.) The final solution is killing off 2500 years of the Great Fraternity, it’s history, it’s mythos, it’s civilization, it’s economy, and now the source of it’s culture: The west, like all other civilizations, is the product of it’s military cultur
There are three means of coercing groups of people with institutions
1) Force, or the threat of force
A person has a VIOLENCE INCENTIVE to behave in a particular way when it has been made known to him that failure to do so will result in some form of physical aggression being directed at him by other members of the collectivity in the form of inflicting pain or physical harm on him or his loved ones, depriving him of his freedom of movement, or perhaps confiscating or destroying his treasured possessions.
2) Remuneration or payment
A person has a REMUNERATIVE INCENTIVE to behave in a particular way if it has been made known to him that doing so will result in some form of material reward he will not otherwise receive. If he behaves as desired, he will receive some specified amount of a valuable good or service (or money with which he can purchase whatever he wishes) in exchange.
3) Moral claims (collective goods)
A person has a MORAL INCENTIVE to behave in a particular way when he has been taught to believe that it is the “right” or “proper” or “admirable” thing to do. If he behaves as others expect him to, he may expect the approval or even the admiration of the other members of the collectivity and enjoy an enhanced sense of acceptance or self-esteem. If he behaves improperly, he may expect verbal expressions of condemnation, scorn, ridicule or even ostracism from the collectivity, and he may experience unpleasant feelings of guilt, shame or self-condemnation.
And a persuasive argument can consist of one or more of these strategies, often in great complexity.
People give priority one or more different weighted combinations, or perhaps ‘chordic’ representations of these strategies. They do so out of habit, and class inclination, just as they follow religious and class sentiments due to their upbringing.
People who belong to institutions have different capacities for adopting these strategies. Force requires discipline and long Time Bias. Remuneration requires cunning and invention. Moral claims require loyalty to consensus, and absorption of, and therefore payment of, opportunity costs. Different social classes have different time biases and consist of people with different time preferences, requiring different types of discipline under different social and economic conditions. ie: it is easier to have a long time preference if one is genetically disposed to better impulse control, and lives in greater security. It is easier to have a short time preference if one is more persuaded by impulses, less disciplined, and in an environment of scarcity.
The social classes are organized by intelligence. Intelligence is the ability to absorb content in real time, to learn abstractions in time, and to permute those abstractions in application to problems in real time. Intelligence regresses toward the mean over generations. THerefore class membership is an indicator of the likelihood of class mobility, and upper class position is difficult to maintain. While we use the word ‘middle class’, and most people in the west live middle class lifestyles, the middle class means possessing disposable income and participating in the market. Therefore the majority of citizens are in the upper proletariat and lower middle classes, which we call the working, white collar working and craftsman classes.
There are different costs to these institutions: Force is extremely expensive. Creating non-corruption, and order (some network of property definitions and their means of transfer). Property is a term for a scarce good that must used, consumed or transformed in the process of production, even if that process is human sustenance. Remunerative institutions require the complex task of concentrating capital then maintaining it in a constantly changing kaleidic and competitive environment. Moral claims require constant advocacy, verbal skill, maintenance of numerous relationships, and constant payment of opportunity costs.
The Social classes have different access to each of these forms of coercion. Those in the institutional class, or upper class, have access to force in the form of policy and law. Those in the capitalist class, or middle, have access to capital : money, and market institutions.
In each strategy people form elites, and organizations for utilizing those strategies. The elites create philosophical frameworks. Each of these frameworks consists of moral claims, and institutional means of perpetuating those claims, and the social benefits of adopting those claims.
Each of these institutions is open to corruption, which is the privatization of opportunity and reward, for personal consumption at group expense. Corruption is fraud.
Each of these strategies, their organizations, institutionas and elites compete against other strategies, organizations and elites, and each attempts to use it’s organization for discounts against other organizations.
This competition is analogous to the game of Rock, Paper, Scissors, if more complicated: each group can sucessfully compete against one another under most circumstances, but can defeat and be defeated by some other combination of forces.
The human mind is comfortable with identity and causality. It can with practice, understand a one dimensional causal spectrum. It can, with effort, understand two dimensions of cuasality. It can with more effort understand three dimensions of a causal spectrum.
Human emotions for example, consist of probably no more than three stimuli: dominance, pleasure and activiation. And that all human emotions, in their seemingly infinite varieity can be described as using these three axis of stimuli. Likewise, human social behavior consists of three different forms of coercion, in some combination, and this leads set of axis leads to seemingly infinite variety.
But it only seems infinite. At it’s base, there are only three forms of social organization.These three forms can be combined, as they are in the majority of the population in some manner or another. Or they can be used as one of three specializtions, each of which attempts to play rock, paper, scissors, with the other two.
Radical Islam is just Marxism for even ‘dumber’ people.
The IQ in the West? It’s 100. In it’s proletariat? Looks like in the UK it’s 84-85.
Among eastern Europeans? It’s 94. In it’s proletariat? Hard to calculate. Perhaps 80?
Among muslims? It’s 84. In it’s proletariat? Again, hard to calculate. Perhaps 80, but more likely in the 70’s?
People are not equal in intellectual capacity.
They cannot possess equal frameworks by which to determine their actions.
Religions are good for IQ’s under 100.
Rationalism is good for IQ’s over 105.
Simple frameworks are for simple people.
Islam is a very, simplistic framework.
Muslims are very, very, simple people.
Islam like Marxism is a framework for peasants: the permanently ignorant and impoverished.
Leading an organization of human beings of any size, is a complex and difficult task.
Human events are kaleidic. The common people have complex and conflicting motivations and incentives.
Leaders must convey near omniscience because their followers are moved at the lowest cost in the shortest time under the assumption of near omniscience.
Power is obtained by a mixture of discipline, cunning, compromise, threats, perseverance, demographics and luck.
Power is held by a mixture of habituation and limited, tacit consent – almost entirely because the alternatives are uncertain and therefore more risky, costly and frightening.
THE UPPER CLASSES, HISTORY, INSTITUTIONS AND LAW
Those who are the victors, and those who create the rules rules, do not write philosophy — they take actions, make decisions, speeches, art, and policy.
They create institutions: The administrative tools of human cooperation.
Their followers write history.
History is the only form of philosophy with any substantive truth content.
There are very few books of Aristocratic philosophy: Aristotle, Machiavelli, Pareto, Weber. Perhaps some of the scholastics.
In the west, administrative philosophy of the church is divided from the military and commercial philosophy of the Manor-Kings.
The writers of the church are members of the middle class or the aristocracy.
But history and the record of history is the writing of the nobility.
THE MIDDLE CLASSES AND PHILOSOPHY
The vast number of works of political philosophy have been written by the upper middle and middle classes.
Nearly all political philosophy is by definition revolutionary – there is no need to use verbal coercion when one has the means by which to enact ones will without verbal coercion.
Western philosophy is an advisory program. It counsels. It suggests. It persuades.
Western philosophy is utilitarian. It is moral and most importantly it is both technical and commercial.
Western philosophy establishes the contract terms of the middle class, by which they are willing to be administered by the aristocracy.
THE LOWER CLASSES AND RELIGION
All religion is political philosophy. It is the philosophy of resistance.
Religion establishes the contract with the peasantry. It sets the terms by which they are willing to be administered by the aristocracy.
The power to resist. To refuse to act. Is a power. It is the power of the weak. But in vast numbers. It is a vast power.
Religious symbols are resistance movement symbols. Whether dress, or icon, mythical figure or scripture. Religious movements are resistance movements. Resistance through unity.
VIOLENCE RULES
But we must be cautious when consuming philosophical writing. It is largely acts of justification. To defend ourselves against it, we must ensure that we study our history as well, because philosophy influences and justifies —- but violence and law rules.
All legal products, all philosophical products, all religious products – all political products of all kinds, are an effort to rotate elites for the purpose of class benefit.
Marx was right that there exists a class struggle. He was wrong that it will end.
He was wrong that the proletariat would ever win.
The fact is, that there are vast differences in ability between individuals. That these differences are genetic. That our classes are a genetic hierarchy. And that genes regress toward the mean.
For these reasons, we will always have class rotation.
And law, philosophy and religion will be the means by which each group seeks to hold or obtain power.
Contrary to the conventional view, manufacturing in the U. S. has been growing in the past two decades despite the decline in manufacturing jobs. The latest data show that the United States is still the largest manufacturer in the world. In 2008, U.S. manufacturing output was $1.8 trillion, compared to $1.4 trillion in China. This means that the United States is producing goods with higher value, such as airplanes and medical equipment.
In addition, most jobs the United States lost to China are low-skilled jobs. By outsourcing those low-skilled jobs to China, Americans have actually become more competitive in high-skilled jobs such as management, innovation, and marketing. The low-skilled jobs also serve China well as Chinese rural migrants have opportunities to move up in life and gain some skills.
I love it: “manufacturing in the U. S. has been growing in the past two decades despite the decline in manufacturing jobs”. What she means is ” productivity has grown as jobs have decreased. Which is a silly metric when the reason people are talking about manufacturing jobs, not productivity.
Secondly, what is hidden in those numbers is the vast difference between small plastics firms for example, that are struggling to survive, and vast, highly efficient manufacturing and engineering organizations that ship goods around the world. (I need to get my hands on this data and mine it a bit. I think that it’s far worse than we see. Productivity can jump simply by consuming capital stock, or temporarily slashing wages.)
It is a logical fallacy, and perhaps, a socially destructive one, to compare productivity to unemployment. The question is what is the highest productivity available without redistribution of productivity gains? We have a lot of unemployed people due to government’s misallocation of capital over decades if not a century. We need more manufacturing jobs that are also more productive than elsewhere. Manufacturing job != manual labor. It means ‘PRODUCING GOODS FOR EXPORT”. And yes, we need more of them, and the people clamoring for them are right to do so.
It’s as if ‘it’s good enough to win numerically, is the same as actually reaching maximum productivity”. I mean, what kind of over-intellectualizing nut makes these kind of comparisons?
The problem is that MONETARY POLICY is NOT ENOUGH of a lever. We need policy that intentionally uses the private sector to create productivity enhancing exports that require the creation of jobs. But our ethic of non-involvement, our unsophisticated politicians who are far more skilled at redistribution and regulation are not skilled at, nor capable of, producing long-term investment. And they are very unlikely to ask the top 1000 business people in the country, exclusive of the multinationals, how to accomplish it. Even though we all know The top seven:
Some Simple Rules Of Thumb:
8) The private sector is not able to concentrate capital in capital-intensive industries that create exports without both removal of state disincentives, and the assistance of the state in creating a market in which people will risk time and capital.
A polity does not always need leadership except in time of crisis. Crisis in this case, created by a government too foolishly dancing with the devil of socialism, dressed up in Keynesian costume, with a joyful following of clerks of the church of positivism chanting from tomes whose authors pretend wisdom.
THEREFORE
General Liquidity Is An Insufficient Lever For Altering A Distorted Economy. People need opportunities to flock together and exploit together. Opportunities to create exports. Not consumption but exports.
The takeover of the administration of state by the middle class in England created a problem for politicians. WIth their new found responsibility, they were not against the king any longer, and now were against each other. Some were cognizant of the risk.
Conservatism: Sentiments of freedom from totalitarianism, brotherhood of protection of the city, individual responsibility. group persistence. the unity of church and state. fidelity to one’s word. Objective truth in all statements. Purity. These are sentiments of group persistence.
Classical Liberal: institutional Balance of power, the rule of law, enfranchisement of the many, contractually explicit government, the virtuous citizen created by trade and exchange.
Libertarian Anarcho Capitalist: privatized institutions of social services, sound money, and the credit society.
Hoppian Monarchy: the inter-temporal incentives of monarchy to accumulate social capital. Insurance companies as vehicles for
Machiavellian: power maintained by minority willing to keep it by violence. violence is superior to fraud in both practice and logic. Compulsory saving.
What separates the west from the less successful cultures, is that the [glossary:aryan] tradition’s philosophy is political rather than interpersonal. The greeks solved the problem of politics. The romans adopted and spread it. The church by contrast teaches empathy. The military state teaches objective truth. Neither compromises. Our version of ying-and-yang is not philosophical and personal, but institutional and political, and people are expected to master both empathy and objective truth. We did not fail to solve the problem of politics as did the other societies.
We failed to keep it once we solved it.
Monarchy, Senate (lords), Parliament, militarism, and the credit society. A house for each class. Not class warfare, but class cooperation.
The BiPolarity Of Social Class, And The Status Competition Between Them.
I”ve posted a diagram that is in progress. It’s at: http://www.capitalismv3.com//srv/htdocs/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/BiPolarityOfClass-2010-08-29.png
What I want to illustrate is the difference between people who exist in the market economy and people who exist in the bureaucratic economy, and their gender, class and cultural origins. Tea partiers are, in general, status seekers who participate in the non-clerical, market economy. They are white people who are remnants of the anglo saxon social order. Very “Burkeian.”
Tea partiers are a status and power movement – a cultural movement that crosses classes. Most tea partiers appear to be middle class, or upper prole. Uppers and upper middle (like me) are not as status-challenged as middle’s are by cultural dissolution. In other words, in any cultural or racial group, the penalty for loss of political dominance by your elites is paid for by its middle and proletariat classes, who benefit from cultural network opportunities created by the dominant preferences. So it’s materially important: The prole risk status loss if they do not rescue their elites.
Even as such, I’m not sure anglo saxons don’t have a bifurcated proletariat class: militial service in the west conveys social status, and anglo saxons are a militial society. This drives enfranchisement lower into the class system.
[callout]Tea partiers are a status and power movement – a cultural movement that crosses classes. Most tea partiers appear to be middle class, or upper prole. …. In any cultural or racial group, the penalty for loss of political dominance by your elites is paid for by its middle and proletariat classes, who benefit from cultural network opportunities created by the dominant preferences. So it’s materially important: The prole risk status loss if they do not rescue their elites.[/callout]
In our case, it so happens, that the tea partier social preference is for freedom, individualism, and capitalism, which also happens to be a material benefit to society. Even if they wrap it in religious doctrine. But they wrap it in religious doctrine because as a group they tend to create solid families, and solid families tend to be more religious. While religiosity increases as IQ decreases, the statement is open to erroneous interpretation. WIthin a people of similar values, the religious moral codes are equally justified among all the member classes. It’s just that the upper classes are more rational, the middle are more allegorical, and the lower are more sentimental. It’s just a matter of articulation – methodology – not one of differences in execution.
The tea party movement relies upon sentimental arguments rather than rational arguments because conservatism lacks a rational social science to compete with marxism. While conservatives and libertarians have tried for over a hundred years, they have so far failed to articulate a social science that can compete with the combination of marxist sentiments, democratic secular humanism, and mathematical positivism. This is partly due to inter-temporal complexity, and our over-reliance on the analysis of money and redistribution rather than the status economy – an economy that humans are far m ore sensitive to than the monetary economy. (Intertemporal complexity is too complicated for here. But in general, conservatism is a longer time preference, that puts greatest emphasis on group persistence – it is a capitalization strategy for the future.)
I think, Half-Sigma’s goal was to try to pull marxian class analysis into the tea party movement. And there is some truth to it. But it’s not a class movement. It’s a culture or race movement. Traditional whites are now a minority and they are losing their status symbols both domestically and internationally and this goes against their core reason for existence – self sacrifice, family, forgone opportunity, in exchange for group persistence, and they see that persistence under attack.
Predictions I Wish Had Been Wrong
Looking for some other stuff, I found this post from October 2008 in which I predicted a level of right-wing craziness about Obama similar to that facing Bill Clinton, but worse.
I really, really wish I had been wrong about that.
But this is followed by interesting comments. All from liberals. Like these:
Palin makes and breaks candidates in the GOP now — she’s far and away the most powerful person in the party. Fox News is #1, and they’re basically a beacon of disinformation. When a paper like the WSJ joins in, it makes a lot of people think that what’s being said is legitimate.
I try to challenge this stuff each and every time I encounter it, but the truth is that I’m never able to persuade anyone who believes it that they’re wrong.
It’s as if the whole country has gone insane, and no one is ashamed to lie or hate people any more.
and
You certainly weren’t Professor Krugman. If they gain enough credibility to have a substantial influence on the electorate, then the whole country is in peril.
And this:
The Right has to act crazy, for one thing they are; for another, the Right knows that if the Left takes control of the government, hunting will be outlawed. The Spanish must have their barbaric, anachronistic bullfight/torture ceremony and the gun-lovers must be allowed to shoot Bambi throught the heart. This is a culture war plain and simple. It is not a civil war, but a highly dangerous and uncivil one. I hope the Right loses, but they have the guns, so I’m doubtful. (Un)civil wars are usually costly in terms of lives lost and sheer destructiveness. I can refer you to the Spanish Civil war to give you an idea. Remember, the Fascists won that one, after something like a million people died.
And this:
There was something about Obama’s can’t-we-all-get-along rhetoric, and then confirmed by a first year of making nice with a bunch of thugs who’d as soon lynch him as have lunch with him (with no result, I must add), that showed this is a man who cannot wield power.
Interesting comments. I think they miss the point though.
The country is demographically center-right. Liberals, comprising no more that 1/5 of the population are a minority compared to independents and conservatives. People seek status more than they seek money. Cultural dominance in each class determines status signals. People will surrender money unto Caesar, but they will never surrender their social position willingly.
As Paul has stated before, the left and right are committed. The independents are the only people who determine elections. They are don’t play the great game except at election time, are disinterested, pragmatic, and swayed by whatever emerges as deciding key issues and the personalities of the candidates. The purpose of both parties is to establish simple sentimental memes that can help frame the candidates currently up for election.
Amidst a long term downturn, and faced with a government that passes a law that affects their health care, over the will of the majority, and the country’s only remaining competitive technology, deprived of their cultural status, it’s only rational that they rebel.
White guilt was easy to sway when they were an entrenched majority, and especially when suffrage, then feminism, both the result of mechanization of the household tasks, could be brought against the christian sentiments of the dominant male fraternity. But as a minority that is embattled and demonized, as a cult of family and freedom, they see their status under direct threat, their values and way of life under threat, and they are beginning to act like a minority whose status and way of life is threatened. They no longer see room for compromise. They no longer feel guilt. They are angry.
It certainly looks like in the long term, the cyclic historians are right, and that the political system no longer works as designed – which is the assumed binding mythology of our country. Despite having certain cooperative and organizational technologies unavailable to the ancients, our government no longer works because it is a system of empire over people with dissimilar cultural-status-political and economic-financial-organizational ambitions. And both the domestic and foreign nations are beginning to revolt – because they can sense that both domestically and internationally, the government is no longer legitimate. A government over people with dissimilar interests must of necessity oppress all.
The current political status holders will not easily surrender their positions. The bureaucracy is enormous, in government, unions, academia, education, the vast white collar clerical system, the media and the arts – all the people who do not participate in the market process, but are intentionally insulated from it as intentionally protected classes.
The decline of the centralized media has been instrumental in assisting in the change, and major media will continue to decline, as each subsector of society increasingly seeks confirmation bias for its fantasies, and each race, culture and class will seek confirmation of its underlying assumptions leading to increasing fictionalization.
This election cycle, and this economy, is simply part of this broader change in the distribution of world economic and political power, and the decline of the international attractiveness of, and personal ambitions of, the western secular humanists — a class whose only strategic option now is to ally with the numeric superiority of Islam as a replacement for Marxism, in order to maintain their control and isolation from market participation.
That is my prediction to equal Paul’s. Without cultural cohesion permitted by the wealth generated by selling off the north american continent to immigrants, the unnatural dominance of the dollar, and military control of world trade routes, trade and money, the coalition of DC (violence), NY (Money) and LA (Propaganda) cannot hold. And as Paul senses, and as most synthetic historians have stated for a century or more, a long term economic stagnation or decline will accentuate inter-group differences, as people rely on intra-group status symbols and traditional alliances for support. Egalitarianism is a convenience of a debtor economy.
